CROWLEY. 359 garments of popery, andwould not, therefore, bepersuaded to wear them.". Previous to the year 1566, this worthy servant of Christ was suspended ; and though the cause of his suspension is not mentioned, it was, undoubtedly, his nonconformity to those rites and ceremonies which he accounted popish, superstitious, and unlawful. During the same year he was involved in other troubles. For in the month of April, seeing a corpse coming to be buried at his church, attended by clerks in their surplices singing before it, he threatened to shut the church-doors against them ; but the singing-men resisted, being resolved to go through with their work, till the alderman's deputy threatened to put them in the stocks for breaking the peace. Upon this, they slunk away. But complaint .was made to Archbishop Parker and other commissioners, and Mr. Crowley was summoned to appear before them. Accord- ingly, April 4th, he appeared before the Archbishop, the Bishop of London, and the rest of their colleagues. During his examination, says our author, there fell from his lips several fond paradoxes, tending to anabaptism, These fond paradoxes, as he is pleased to call them, were the following ; When speaking of a call to the ministry, he said, " A man may have -a motion in his conscience to preach, without any external call. And, as pastor, he would resist the surplice-men." When the commissioners asked him whether he would resist a minister thus sent to him, (meaning in his surplice) he said, " That till he was deprived, his conscience would move him so to do." These are his fond paradoxes, said to be of so dangerous a ten- dency l When the archbishop discharged him from his flock and his parish, he refused to be, deprived contrary to law, saying, a he wouldbe committed to prison, rather than suffer a wolf,to come to his flock." The good man was, therefore, deprived of his living, separated from his flock, and committed to prison. Also, the alderman's deputy mentioned above, for taking his part against the surplice- men, was obliged to enter into a bond of a hundred pounds, to be ready when called. " So gentle," says Mr. Strype, was our archbishop in his censure of so great a fault !"-f- How longMr. Crowley remained a prisoner, we have not been able to learn. Certain it is, that he continued under Ntrype's parker, p. 151. + Ibid. p. ?IS.
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